Friday, October 5, 2012

So, Sidney is mobile.It started off innocently enough, he went from “getting into the crawl position” to “dragging himself to a new location” (previously discussed) to “oh look, he’s crawling!”.This was all very exciting, and The Wife and I were beaming with parental pride at our son’s development … then he learned how to teleport.I know what you’re all thinking, “oh, Ed, you and your colorful hyperbole!”, but there is no other (comedic) way to describe the staggering speed at which Sidney gets from point A to point B when you are not directly watching him.It’s not unlike observing an Uncertainty Principle experiment on a macro scale: you either know that Sidney is moving, but can’t spot him immediately, or you can pinpoint where he is exactly, but you have no idea how, or more importantly how fast, he got there.Heisenberg, you had no idea how deep your theory ran.

Now, Sidney’s adherence to quantum laws creates some additional problems as well. First, unless you are staring right at him, you have no guaranty he is going to be anywhere near his last spot if you take your gaze away from him to do something else, like, for example, blinking.He’s playing with a toy near the couch, you blink, he’s now in front of the bedroom door, you sneeze and suddenly he’s at the wine rack pulling at a bottle.Your eyes were shut for a total combined 6 nano-seconds (might have been longer, and I might have left the room momentarily, but who’s counting) and he’s traversed 15 feet, making 2 stops.Come to think of it, it’s the Uncertainty Principle wrapped around Schrödinger’s Cat: Sidney either is or is not teleporting to some new spot in the apartment, but you can’t tell until you look up and yell “WHERE DID YOU GO!?”

Second, Sidney can force objects through Einstein-Rosen-esque worm holes and/or extra-dimensional pockets, rendering them, at least temporarily, un-findable. To illustrate, he has a set of nestling cups that he loves playing with (Nana, Abuela and the Admiral have spent countless hours building towers with them for him that he gleefully knocks down).Sidney grabs the nestled stack of cups and within seconds half of them are nowhere to be seen.They have been found whole rooms away from where he was playing with them during the day.The only possible (not really) explanation is that he is holding onto one just as he teleports (because you blinked) and the thing is dropped off in some Calabi-Yau nook from which it emerges later.I’m starting to think early quantum physicists were participating in an elaborate “bring your kids to work” program when they made most of their discoveries.

All of this aside, watching a whole new world open up for Sidney is fascinating.The smile on his face when he races to something he was staring at, or having him crawl from one end of the couch just to snuggle with you, brings a warmth to the heart that words do not adequately convey.Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish work on a multi-dimensional tracking device.